If you are thinking of buying one day car insurance or indeed any other form of short-term (1 to 28 days) car insurance there are a number of legal issues that you may wish to be aware of.

Protected no claims discounts

Several short-term car insurance companies state that if you have an accident which results in a claim against you whilst you are insured by them it will not affect any existing no claims discount you have from another insurer. However, a common stipulation is that if you do have an accident which is your fault and there is another insurance company which could indemnify you then you should make a claim against that insurer first. This could happen if you had a policy which covered you for any vehicle that did not belong to you, a clause which many comprehensive policies contain. This would mean of course that you could automatically lose at least part of any no claims bonus provided by that insurer. There is another point to bear in mind; you are obliged to inform any insurer of any accidents you have been involved in whether they resulted in a claim or not. You could find your existing insurer increasing a premium as a result of an accident you had which was covered by short-term car insurance, even though your no claims discount remained the same. In this event you would still be out of pocket somewhat as a result of the accident. If you did not inform your insurance company of this accident you could well find your insurance invalidated and a claim refused by your insurer!

It would seem that the 'protected no claims discount' should be treated with a certain degree of cynicism.

Buying a road fund licence

Under current legislation it is necessary to produce evidence of insurance for a vehicle before it can be taxed and the DVLA guidelines state that downloaded documentation is acceptable for this purpose. Strangely enough certain insurers (not the one we link to) state clearly that their policies cannot be used for this purpose. If an application is made by telephone or online the Motor Insurance Database is queried automatically to see whether or not insurance is in place on the vehicle in question and if a policy is in fact found then, all other matters being satisfactory, the vehicle can be taxed. We therefore have a comical situation in which the regulators say yes, you can, and the insurer says no, you can't. The moral is that, if you do want to insure a vehicle using a short term insurance policy you should be careful which company you buy it from! Rumour has it however that in the very near future it will no longer be necessary to produce any proof of insurance at all, since owing to the SORN regulations the government feels that it is virtually impossible for anyone to drive without insurance, a belief that is not shared by a large number of scallywags.

Permitting a vehicle to be driven without insurance

Many people are unaware that if they lend a car to someone else and that person turns out to be uninsured, they themselves will have committed an offence of permitting a vehicle to be driven without insurance; the likely punishment for which could well be a fine of up to £5000 + 6 points on the poor car owners licence! If they truly believed that insurance was in place, if the driver had sworn upon everything he or she held holy that this was the case, it would make no difference whatsoever to a conviction because it is what is called an 'absolute offence'; in other words you are either guilty or not with no shades of grey in between. It is therefore absolutely essential that if you do lend a car or other motor vehicle to another person you make absolutely, 100% certain that adequate insurance is in place. Needless to say you can do that by buying a policy via this excellent website.

carinsurancefor1day.co.uk is a trading style of Prudent Plus Ltd of Booths Hall, Booths Park, Chelford Road Knutsford
Cheshire WA16 8GS, which is registered in England, company number 10104295.

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Conduct Authority no. 469048. We receive from them a commission for each policy purchased; this will not affect the premium you pay for your policy in
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